Donald Trump’s Crowd Cheers His Muslim Exclusion Plan

Donald Trump's first order of business, when he came to a stage set up on the U.S.S. Yorktown, a museum ship in South Carolina, was to tell the crowd about his plans for keeping all Muslims out of America. "Pretty tough stuff," he said. The audience already knew about it: Trump had shocked his own party, a few hours earlier, with a statement that, his campaign said, covered “everyone” who was Muslim. But the thousands of people on the ship, cheering and almost giddy, wanted to hear Trump say it himself.

There were a couple of items of routine business: for the first ten minutes, Trump read the numbers in a new poll that showed him ahead in Iowa, promised to build a wall, attacked China, praised the military, and instructed security on how to throw out a protester, as seen in the video of the event. The guards needed to be more effective, he said—“Strengthen yourself up!”—like he would at the border. As he strolled across the stage to get a better look at a woman being dragged out ("Treat her very nicely, please") the crowd, seemingly energized by the confrontation, began chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" and "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"—as if those phrases were interchangeable.

President Obama's speech the night before, on the measures that the Administration was taking to counter the Islamic State in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, was "highly inappropriate," Trump said. "And I wrote something today that I think is very, very sad yet important and probably not politically correct but I don't care." The great leaders of the past, he said, would hate "this crap." He needed an explanation for why no one had stopped the San Bernardino shooters, and he found one in some polls he had come across online, which seemed to indicate that a lot of American Muslims were interested in "Sharia law" and thought that violence in a global jihad was justified. Never mind that this poll was commissioned by an anti-Muslim group ("very highly respected group of people," Trump said), using extremely dubious methodology. Trump had the answer. He'd put out a statement—not that the media would report it honestly ("Scum, scum, scum"). "Should I read you the statement?" he asked. "Yeaahhh," came the answer. He began reading, annotating his own words as he went along.

“ ‘Donald J. Trump is calling for’—now listen, you've got to listen to this, it’s pretty heavy stuff, and it's common sense, we have to do it, remember the poll numbers, twenty-five per cent, fifty-one per cent, so remember the poll numbers and listen. ‘Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.’ ” ("The hell" wasn't in the official statement.) "We have no choice," Trump said, as the crowd interrupted him with loud applause. "We have no choice." He shook his head as the cheers continued and he said, a third time, "We have no choice."

“ ‘Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension’—of such a big portion!” Trump said. “Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine’—we're going to have to figure it out; we're going to have to figure it out. We can't live like this. It's going to get worse and worse. You're going to have more World Trade Centers. It's going to get worse and worse, folks." It did get worse and worse, as Trump talked about Muslims as if, as a group, they had "no sense of reason or respect for human life." There has to be surveillance of mosques, he said. We have to be strong, we have to report on suspicious people. "Closing that Internet up in some way" might be a good move. There were more cheers. "We can't let people kill us," Trump said. Trump wanted to know if Muslims in this country "love us or hate us."

It did not seem to occur to him that they are us—are Americans. His proposal, in case it wasn't clear, runs not only against the Constitution but against the general reason that the Founders set up this country. (On Monday, Trump's campaign said that the restriction would even apply to American citizens who were abroad when Trump walked into the White House; on Tuesday, on ABC, though, he suggested that there might be a citizenship exception.) It is a grave insult to the Muslim men and women in our armed forces, but also to Muslim kindergarteners and retirees, not to mention Japanese-Americans whose shameful internment we were supposed to have at least learned from (Trump cited it approvingly, on Tuesday morning, in support of his plan), as well as to any Americans who believe in this nation’s principles and don’t want to go past border guards checking paperwork to determine people’s religion.

Trump's support is not just about a crowd in South Carolina. He is the front-runner for President in the Republican Party, and he has been for months. That he is a man at home in his party could be seen in the mixed responses to his call. Trump is slipping in Iowa in one poll, but the candidate who is gaining is Ted Cruz, who said tepidly, in response to Trump’s statement, "Well, that, that is not my policy.” He only wanted to exclude Muslims from certain countries. Rand Paul had a similar response, emphasizing his border vigilance. Ben Carson said he hoped we were looking at everyone. Chris Christie said that Trump's proposal was something people say when they "have no experience," rather than, say, a compromised moral core. It was "a ridiculous position that won't even be productive,” since to stop plots the government needed coöperative informants, and the court wouldn't buy it, anyway. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio responded similarly, criticizing Trump, but in ways that suggested that the problem might be one of degree and temperament, and perhaps mental stability. Bush tweeted that "Donald Trump is unhinged. His 'policy' proposals are not serious." Rubio said that his “his habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” The Republican Party, apparently fearful of losing his voters, has not truly confronted Trump on any point but his buffoonery, which is not the main problem; the bigotry at the heart of the clown act is. Perhaps this will be the party’s chance. The first response from Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, was that he didn’t want to comment right away. At a press conference Tuesday morning, though, he said, “What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for.” (He added that he would support whoever the party nominated.)* Was this really a hard one to figure out?

"I wish we could call—is there anyway we could call the election tomorrow?" Trump said. At another point, talking about the stadiums he filled in various cities, he said, "There is an unbelievable love in these rooms." Trump looked out at the crowd, which had risen to its feet and was calling out his name. "I love you, too," he said. So much love, and so much hate.

*Updated with Ryan’s Tuesday comments.

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.